Star Trek: Armada II

Star Trek: Armada II (2001) followed up on the successful first installment and expanded the series with deeper crew management and new battle mechanics. Development was handled by Mad Doc Software, while Activision remained the publisher, once again releasing the game as a fully licensed title using the visuals and character voices from the Star Trek show universe. The second installment ran on a reworked engine with fully three-dimensional ship movement, which, compared to the first game, allowed for more pronounced tactical maneuvering along the vertical axis of the battlefield. The reworked interface also made it clearer to command larger numbers of ships at once, something appreciated by players who had found the first game confusing during hectic battles.

The player once again commands fleets of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, or Borg, but now also has to deal with the fate of crews on board — ships can be boarded by landing parties, an enemy vessel can be seized mid-battle using boarding teams, or key officers can be lost, which noticeably affects the whole ship's performance, from repair speed to weapon system effectiveness. The second installment also placed greater emphasis on building bases deeper in space and more elaborate upgrade trees for each faction, so gameplay differs more markedly depending on the chosen side. The campaign continues the events of the first game and deals with the aftermath of the Borg invasion, while also offering cooperative multiplayer missions, which was rather an exception among strategy games of the time, and the game was further supplemented by a scenario editor for custom maps and missions. The enemy AI was noticeably more aggressive than in the first game, so even the solo campaign put more weight on thoughtful fleet positioning than on sheer numbers of ships.

Why play it: Armada II is the logical choice for anyone who finished the first game and wants a deeper, more elaborate fleet-command system with boarding and crew management elements. Players looking for an RTS with pronounced factional asymmetry will also appreciate it, since it isn't limited to just clicking on units — here, how you manage your own crew and how much you risk when attempting to seize an enemy ship matters just as much.